Varduun Wiki
Welcome to the Varduun Wiki I'm creating a fantasy universe for possible use in video games, roleplaying, novels, and all kinds of other stories, and I'm using this wiki to organize and display all the information I want about it. My interests are very much in history, anthropology, religion, and martial arts, so these aspects of the world tend to be more fleshed out than others. If you have any interest in contributing to this, I would appreciate you contacting me first at michaelthomaskane@gmail.com. For the moment I wish to personally maintain this wiki and would rather not having anyone contributing at the moment. However, I liked having a wiki I could navigate and edit online which is why I chose Wikia...even though there is no way to currently restrict access to everyone but people I approve. But if you are really interested and would like to talk feel free to chat me up, go ahead. If you don't talk to me though, I warn you that I might end up deleting your contributed content, please don't take it personally. Eventually I intend to make aspects of the world editable to everyone, but through a structured filter on another site, where people could contribute ideas, artifacts, people, and all manner of things that might end up in the world's records. What is Varduun? Varduun is a fantasy universe, primarily centered around the main planet , Varduun, which is similar to earth. I'm still working out the scientific details of the planet, so forgive me if things sound incomplete. My goal with this planet is to generate extremely detailed cultures, histories, people and lands that are highly believable and exist in technology level no more sophisticated than the late middle ages in our world. 'Magic?' The nature of magic in Varduun is meant to closely resemble the way magic "works" in our world. What I mean is, its in many ways, barely noticeable, highly mysterious and controversial. Depending on who you talk to, it either controls the world, or is all absolute hogwash. Very visceral, impressive magic normally turns out to be tricks, and some of the most influential magic tends to be based on subtlely affecting people's minds and hearts, with practices like meditation , astral projection, and rituals. 'Monsters? Races? Aliens?' Like magic, the extravagant, non-human beings of Varduun are similar to the non human beings that supposedly surround and inhabit our world according to religions and conspiracy theories. These beings are never universally recognized as actually existing. Humans are the only consistently recognized intelligent beings shown in Varduun. The others consist of various physical to spiritual entities that exist anywhere from other dimensions, to the far reaches of the oceans, or underneath the earth. Are they real? Imaginary? Both? Depends on who you ask. Nevertheless, the thoughts and ideas surrounding them have a strong impact on the human beings in the world. 'Sounds Lame...' My goal with Varduun is to create a world that is, from an anthropological, religious, and cultural sense, very similar to our own. However, none of the cultures, ethnic groups, or mythologies are meant to be mirrors of real world peoples. There are no people in Varduun who are "like the Vikings" or "like the Aztecs". They might be a mix of several cultures, but everything should be mixed at least enough to where, even if there are recognizable tropes of a culture, there are so interwined with other ideas that its truly difficult to discern the influences. My goal is that the cultures will seem natural to the world, not just a reference to some real world culture. 'Computer Simulation' Whenever possible I've tried to used computer simulations to create landmasses, climates, the spread of cultures, ideas, etc. I've used various video games, software, and online tools to help me flesh out details I didn't feel confident developing by hand, or felt like having a simulation would inspire my imagination. At some point I'll list out some of the techniques I've used to generate cultural ideas, continents, and various other ideas. 'Scale' The world of Varduun is meant to be similar in scale to our own earth, only slightly smaller. I want a world that similar enough in size to the real world where the cultural and historical considerations make realistic sense. Too often in fantasy worlds in video games, I feel like the worlds are too geographically small. When you consider the sizes of populations, cities, trade, warfare, languages, and religions, the lack of realistic scale would realistically have a huge impact on how the world operates. There is a reason why knights and samurais, too very different cultures, an extremely long distance away, never encountered each other in our real world and why there are over 2000 languages in Africa alone, which is about thousands more languages than you might find in the entire World of Warcraft. I'm the type of guy that gets bothered that I can walk across the entire country of Skyrim or Cyrodil in a few hours, or that the towns don't seem to have fully working or sensible economies. It just messes with my sense of immersion. 'You're insane!' Yes I know. Hopefully I'm not the only one. I want to create a fantasy universe that in absurd in its level of detail and sophistication. I don't really know yet where this journey will take me. For whatever reason, it's important to me, and hopefully I can find some like-minded people to help me someday. :) Latest activity Photos and videos are a great way to add visuals to your wiki. 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